Shots Not Taken
by anotherday123
Summary: Hermione: the best in her field. Reliable. A sure shot. Fatally accurate. Harry: a supportive friend. A reassuring presence. Ron: the target. Ridiculously easy to spot. Ridiculously hard to kill. Hitman AU because why not! Hermione is caught between her own job and her own feelings. Her life is dark, but it seems a little brighter since Ron came along.
1. Chapter 1: And so it begins

Hermione never missed. That much was for sure. And with an accuracy rate of 100%, her clients were never disappointed. Get in, aim, exhale, shoot, get out. It was easy. That is, until she saw _him_.

He had bright red hair, almost like he was asking to be centered in the frame of her scope.

She was only a shell, looking through her scope not at a person but at what would pay for her rent next month or food or hot water.

He didn't know that he was supposed to die that day. He didn't know that as he was staring at his laptop, sculpting vivid scenes with pictures and words and sounds, a faint red dot was tracing steady patterns in his hair, controlled by a beautifully destructive creation of mankind - a Blaser R93. And he didn't know that the one person that he would ever truly love had her finger on the trigger.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! This is my first fic, so please go easy on me! I would love to hear feedback - please comment suggestions for either my writing or the plot! I would love to include anything you would be interested in! Thank you! Also, I know this chapter is super super short - the next one is already 3 times as long, so don't worry! This was just a sample :)


	2. Chapter 2: The early days

Hermione Granger was a hitman - hitwoman - a contract killer. She was good with a weapon, quick on her feet, invisible when she had to be. She knew how to blend into a crowd, a skill she had carefully crafted. It had been difficult for her from the beginning - having hair twice the size of your head isn't ideal for being discreet - but she learned because she had to.

Life hadn't come easy for her. Her parents had gone off the deep end long after Hermione had learned to depend on them. Both her father and mother gave into the drug addiction, seemingly forgetting they had a daughter at all in their clouded trance. She saw no choice but to leave when their negligence overwhelmed her life. She retreated into the lifestyle of a child without familial ties, joining Hogwarts, an association of kids left to fight for themselves. She learned nearly everything she knew regarding survival. The children at Hogwarts were damaged goods, but they held great power. They bore the pain of desperation for a family, for stability. They learned to value their security primarily and everything else secondarily.

She befriended Harry, a boy that fled from an abusive home life, almost immediately. He was oblivious, at times, to reality, and Hermione took it upon herself to help him build his emotional armor after carefully constructing her own. Harry was naive, as she had been in the beginning, but he learned to keep fighting, to keep persevering, with her help. She wasn't a particularly easy friend to have. She was difficult to predict, smart and engaged at all times. She was quick on her feet, vanishing without a trace whenever danger arose.

Lacking in funds, Hermione and Harry often had to resort to small criminal acts and were thus on constant alert for police. Minimal, non-violent crimes sufficed for many years, pickpocketing being their main source of income, and they managed. They lived day-to-day for almost a decade, attempting public school at age 10 but realizing that they lost too many hours in the day to make money. They started regular jobs at age 14, and it was enough to last for a while. They tried dating at age 15, when the hormones got the best of them, but that ended quickly. They just weren't fit for one another romantically, and their friendship was too valuable to risk.

Their lives were moving, improving, steadying out by age 16. They had 3 jobs each, but they had a decent attempt at an apartment and food on the table every day. They had running water, though it was rarely hot, but that they had room to spare for small luxuries, like cacti to add some kind of life to her otherwise dull room, was a blessing.

Things were looking up; their hard work was finally paying off - that is, until Harry started coughing up blood.


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione cared for him until she couldn't any longer, putting off a trip to the hospital, at Harry's persistent request, until he finally gave in to Hermione's pleading. They both knew they didn't have the money to put him through treatment if results were less than ideal, and they both knew that coughing up blood in a sink did not equate to perfect health.

They had had scares in the past. They both worked dangerous jobs. Hermione's infected ankle cut from a dropped knife at her waitressing job eventually healed but left a nasty scar. Harry's broken pinky from his construction job was still crooked, but at least it had stopped hurting. Hermione caught a particularly bad case of the flu one winter, but, especially after Harry had lost a telemarketing job, they were in no place to spend on hospital bills. They always overcame without a trip to the ER; they always found a way to grit their teeth and carry on, but Harry didn't look so lucky this time.

Lab work came back with news of a malignant tumor in his left lung, and it became clear that Hermione had no choice but to force Harry to receive treatment. He knew it was expensive and insane to allow their funds from years of hard work to be drained on him, insisting that Hermione bring him home and just hope for the best. Hermione was fierce, though, and refused to accept Harry's answer. He would receive treatment, she would make ends meet, no doubts or hesitations.

Of course, she had no plan. She had no way of knowing how she could possibly find a solution. Her 3 jobs were nowhere close to sufficient. She considered prostitution, but...no. She looked into the drug trade but figured that, with all of her criminal warnings in the past, being caught dealing would be less than forgiving. She fought for her situation to work. She paid for nearly half of Harry's chemo treatments by working more hours than she had in a day, struggling to stay awake and healthy herself. But when she collapsed from exhaustion at work during a graveyard shift and was early dismissed around midnight, she realized she had pushed the envelope, stretching herself as far as she could to try to make things work. Harry's next payment would be required soon, and she knew that without it, the hospital would stop delivering treatment. Harry had just begun to show signs of improvement - for him to stop now would not only set him back further, but it could even kill him faster. He needed his treatment, and Hermione needed to help him. He was already doing more than he should have been. He was working from his hospital bed, completing online jobs in the hopes of supporting her somewhat through the financial struggle. He was guilt-ridden, but there was only so much he could do between the fits of nausea and exhausting, painful treatments.

It was on her midnight walk home that she saw it. A man, hooded and clad in all black, approached a park bench, quickly duct taping a package to the bottom of it before running off into the night. Hermione saw no one in a wide radius of her, and her curiosity got the best of her. She crept up to the bench, feeling underneath until her hand rested on the package. Its contents were heavy, wrapped in a black trash bag, but she could feel a general outline of the interior, a cold metal. She gasped, immediately recognizing the shape, and panicked. She stuffed it into her sweatshirt pocket and ran out of the park, not stopping until she reached her front door. Her eyes were wide in disbelief, and she nearly passed out again with the realization of what she had just done. Before she could let her imagination get the best of her, she made her way inside, opened the package, and read the contents of a note inside.

In the bag, she found instructions. An identity, a location and time, a phone number, and a wad of cash. They identity read: Johnathan Alden, 34, abusive husband, works at Merildo Co. The wad of cash was more than Hermione had seen at once. A note tucked into the stack read "Second half to be delivered upon completion of job. Call number when finished"

Finally, she reached in the bag and pulled out the final weapon. A gun. She didn't know what kind of gun it was or how it worked, but she knew it was powerful, and she knew it was deadly. And if this was what she would have to do to keep Harry alive, then she would do it. A taken life for a saved life, and she was ready.


End file.
